Posted by Spooner | 20 Comments
WoW: Is raiding too easy?
Yeah we’ve been here many times before, I hope that the conversation is just as lively as previous incarnations as well. I used to side with the hardcore raiders in thinking that the raid game and WoW as a whole has gotten too easy. I used to steep myself in thoughts of nostalgia on how the original raids and even Burning crusade content was so much more challenging than the offerings of Wrath. I can say now with the utmost honesty that I was full of shit – and most people who think that way are in some way full of shit too. Be it self dilution or simple denial, the direction Blizzard has taken the World of Warcraft is a right one and only improves the health of the game and it’s playerbase as a whole. To quote Bornakk directly:
We see posts like this from time to time but they tend to not include any compelling argument. Nostalgia is powerful. In a game that has been out this long there can be a lot of great memories of the past that you would relish to relive again. We understand this, but, the game continues to move forward and changes are made to benefit the entire playerbase.
As opposed to the old systems of years ago, the current raiding content is more accessible to more people. Yes, this is a good thing. The way emblems reward items also allow more players to be on the same or similar levels of gear and help minimize/avoid the “I’m in max gear and smash all faces” scenarios that force players to start from the very beginning raid content no matter how progressed the content patches are.
For players who are only satisfied by beating the highest level content and the most challenging encounters, the hard modes are available. Encounters like Yogg-0 and Anub’arak 25 are no joke. Then, the Lich King awaits (behind his walls).
I’ll admit that the Yogg-saron fight in full Ulduar and Naxxramas (25) gear wasn’t a simple fight and the first time we got him down did feel like an accomplishment. The first time downed with fewer watchers was even more so and I personally have yet to defeat him with zero watchers active. But a lot of players will just as easily and irresponsibly say “oh it’s easy and faceroll and I can do it in my sleep without breaking a sweat” if you can ignore the fierce thumping of the masturbatory nature of these claims – you’ll realize that it really is nothing more than self-fucking in the face of exaggeration.
The new dungeon system, 10 and 25 normal and heroic modes, and badge system has pretty much made it so that if I start playing today or two months ago – the endgame will remain proportionate.
Before, you could not raid Blackwing Lair until you were in full Tier 1 gear (give or take) and the only way to get it was to raid Molten Core. In BC you wouldn’t be caught dead in Black Temple (pre-nerf for Wrath) unless you were pushing gear from SSC or TK. If you joined the game late you were pretty fucked or at the mercy of your friends to carry you through content until you were on their level.
I notice a lot these days people asking for achievements and such before raid invites. Isn’t that contradictory to the idea that people are so hung up on? If raiding was such a face-rolling easy and quick thing to do then why do players insist so adamantly that you have already completed it before joining the group? Oh, because they want a fast and easy loot piñata run and not have to spend hours explaining fights, wiping, checking gear and consumables, or working strategies for different group compositions.
Raid Heroics and hardmodes should be challenging and is most cases they are with very little room for mistakes. But raiding as a whole doesn’t need to be an insurmountable climb uphill, both ways, in the snow, barefoot, with only a sharp stick to fend off the gathering hordes.
I think you’re right. Blizz has made it perfect for all suitable players from the casual raider to the hardcore end-game player.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say the Wrath content is faceroll. They have many fights which are gimmicky and they’re meant to be gear checks for a certain set. Sapphiron for Frost Resist or survivability, Heigan safety dance, Hodir and positioning, Mimiron and splitting DPS in p3, raid mobility in northrend beasts, tank avoidance in Anub’arak, priority management in Lady Deathwhisper.
Once you got the pattern and you have raid synergy with the people you run with, yes, it is then super easy… but never a faceroll.
Hardmodes, if you’ve ever tried PuGgin ToGC, are impossible without a highly attuned group of people who know the fights, have top notch gear, and, such as with fights like the Twins, pure luck and timing. Any person who says that Blizz is taking it too easy on the Casual raiders needs to seriously consider the content they’re working on and think about moving up the ladder (assuming they’re prepared for it).
ICC Hardmodes (Heroic Mode, w/e) are going to be hellish; I can already tell.
Death Saurfang in 25man heroic… BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA have fun with that
“I notice a lot these days people asking for achievements and such before raid invites. Isn’t that contradictory to the idea that people are so hung up on? If raiding was such a face-rolling easy and quick thing to do then why do players insist so adamantly that you have already completed it before joining the group?”
Nothing more needs to be said.
Except Spooner is a n00b and is just jealous he isn’t l33t like me! Suck my ePeen bitch!!
(That’s me pretending to be an elitist bitch who only associates with people in max gear and continues to complain that the stuff is too easy)
“I HAVE THE BEST GEAR IN THE GAME I HAVE LOGGED 367 /PLAYED DAYS AND I HAVE 8000 ACHIEVEMENTS AND EVERY PROTO-DRAKE AND EVERY LEGENDARY AND I’M A DEATH KNIGHT AND ALL THIS CONTENT IS FREAKING EASY YOU GUYS I FACEROLL EVERYTHING GUFFAW!”
Well you know… that’s just like – your opinion man.
First off, a little history. I have been playing since BC so never raided the 40man raids of vanilla. I have always been in casual raiding guilds, 2 perhaps 3 days a week. Progressed through Kara, Grulls, and Mags in BC but not much further, so perhaps compared to some of the more hard core raiders im kind of noob, but i have to say that i am completely happy with the way raiding has evolved. It is accessible by even a noob like me so i get to see the content that the developers have been slaving over and get wowed by the epic battles that ensue. The instances are plenty challenging for myself and the little guild that im in, but don’t discount us too much, we have several very good raiders that know how to play their toons and have very respectable gear. All in all, i would have to say that i am very pleased with raiding, especially that i get to see some of what would be considered the higher end raids, albeit in 10 man normal mode.
Well… the term “easy” is really relative to the guild, isn’t it? Something that is easy to an elite raiding guild, might be appropriately difficult to a casual raiding guild and impossible for a pug raid. While something that is challenging to that elite guild is impossible for anyone else. Now many people in those raiding guilds may like the fact that difficult raids can’t be done by everyone… but Blizzard has, wisely in my opinion, decided to cater more to the casual raiding guilds, since there are way more of them out there, and tuned content with them in mind. This has made more content available to more people than ever before…. but has probably insulted the eManhood of many of the elitist guilds, that probably represented 1% of total player base. (How dare they allow noobs into OUR instances?!)
Wow, so much Bliz Kool-aid being quaffed here… well, as Kalenrask said, the ease or difficulty of raiding lies within who you generally raid with, but consider these two things: if you have been around since tbc or before, your skill today is considerably higher than it was back then, AND raid encounters have been undertuned since wotlk naxx. Undoubtedly raiding is a hell of a lot easier than it used to be. IIC is a joke, yes, even on 25man mode unless you are pugging it or your guild doesnt know wtf its doing. Clearing the first 4 bosses in ICC on the first night doesnt constitute a challenge, unless you are woefully undergeared or easily distracted by shiny little things, but thats just the way bliz tuned the fights and designed them to be.
Raiding to me used to be about being presented with apparently unsurmountable odds and figuring a way to down a tough, challenging boss that required most of your raid staying alive and pumping out every last ounce of performance from your character. Fights like Lady Vashj, Kael and Archimonde were representative of what a raid boss should be like, it felt like Bliz was issuing me a challenge – see if you can defeat this motherfucker, he will wipe the floor with your corpses and feed on your tears! Nowadays, in comparison, all bosses seem like loot piñatas.
Having been part of a high end raiding guild, I can assure you we didnt give a shit about “noobs being in our instances”, in fact, we only concerned ourselves with our own enjoyment of the game, and that enjoyment has been diminished since wotlk. I do think the changes to make obtaining gear easier to enter new raids, are good changes, but the game is changing into something I dont enjoy as much anymore – we used to raid for the tough challenge of downing bosses, nowadays its seems we just raid to have a whack at the loot lottery and to keep collecting our weekly allotment of frost badges. Its not a change I particularly enjoy, but then again I guess I am a minority.
I’m liking that when I back and praise a game that has nothing but hype to prove it’s worth (Aion) I’m not called out. The second I start marshaling for Warcraft as an established game with amazing qualities that isn’t really matched at all other than Champions Online and I’m suddenly drinking of the Blizzard Kool-aid.
Funny how that works huh…
Plenty of people called you out (though admittedly most of the wow-fans) when you marshalled Aion. Memory can be selective that way. Funny how that works, huh?
Looking back and reading through the comments I had a bunch of rampant fanboys fighting for both sides half thinking WoW was garbage and half thinking Aion was garbage. in hindsight, the WoW fanboys though annoying as get all were right. But that was the entire premise for that one article I wrote pitting both games against each other and validating that arguing which is better – is retarded.
I’m not trying to convince or convert just discuss, I don’t think Wrath has put things in the shit-can as badly as you or others would think in regards to the raid game. You can’t deny nor ignore the facts that gaming in general across all genre is becoming more mainstream and isn’t that what we always wanted as gamers? For OUR entertainment medium OUR hobby to be accepted and not looked upon by people being led by fucking morons like Jack Thompson? WoW has played a major role in turning the MMORPG away from the hardcore buttfuck grindfest and raidsink that it used to be and instead is pushing the game as a giant community oriented experience where you can socialize as well as play a game in the truest sense.
As for raiding and how it “used to be” I think is nothing but very heavy nostalgia setting in when the gap between the raider and the casual was so wide that yes, you would see a guy in full epic T2 running around and you’d gush over it. That was awesome for the ePeen and ego of the raider but it sucked for the rest of us. There weren’t any insurmountable odds in raiding post classic WoW and even that was more due to managing 40 players in the original Naxx and AQ40. Hell, I remember Vael being to goddamned bane of my existence for a long time. Hyjal, SSC, and TK were one trick ponies that we downright laughed off once we had the raid stacked- er I mean composed properly.
The goal in Wrath I think (and correct me if I’m wrong) is that you can beat anything Blizzard throws at you with a solid team. Raid stacking won’t work, and you can’t “faceroll” unless you have enough people OVERGEARED to carry the raid. I’m starting to wonder if this conversation is going to show up again in Cataclysm or any other MMO I might write about in 2010.
I dont think either side is entirely wrong or right, as with most things in this world the truth lies somewhere in between. My opinion on wow hasnt changed since the days we all rallied behind Aion and the possibility of an alternative to wow, it just strikes me as odd that just becasue Aion closed Beta turned out to be a marketing ploy to lure us unto false promises, suddenly all the misgivings and complaints we had about wow back then are suddenly forgiven and forgotten while we bask in the glory of a single new patch to the game?
This is what I mean when I speak of drinking the Kool-Aid, we all griefed on wow in summer when we glommed onto Aion, and because Bliz adds a LFG tool and a new raid, all those issues we bitched about are forgotten, and bliz can do no wrong? If this is going mainstream, and if mainstream means dumbing down the content to make ti accessible for all players, then I want no part of it. You kow what “mainstream gaming” is nowadays? Guitar Hero, Wii Fit and iphone games are mainstream gaming. That is not the future. It is a different market, and wow at its core, is a hardcore game with a hardcore rpg basis that has had the fortune of becoming a cultural icon of our times and garnered huge success, most of it well deserved.
Bliz is trying a balancing act, and they have gone from hardcore days of tbc and pre-tbc (if you really want to convince anyone that Sunwell and Vanilla Naxx were cakewalk and easily manageble with a “stacked” raid, good luck with that one), to the lax and loose days of WotlK. I hope that things in Cataclysm will be better tuned, I dream of raid dungeons where we have a bunch of normal difficulty bosses, another bunch of optional, extra hard bosses like Algalon to test the mettle of good raiding guilds, and not just all bosses with optional easy or hard modes you can select from a fucking option in your UI.
And you can bet your ass we will be arguing this in 2010 when cataclysm launches and we raid that shit too; we may view wow from different perspectives, spooner, but we share the same passion for a game we love. I just dont cut it as much slack as you do, and expect more out what is possibly the most popular and lucrative game of all time.
I want to start off topic a little and commend Spoon, Dran, and mostly everyone who posts on this little blog here. Unlike most of the internet which turns into a giant flame war, this is a great place to actually debate and share our opinions (and maybe have a few sarcastic rants here and there
).
That being said, I think WoW has undergone one major transition throughout its little life. When it first came out most of the players got it because it was Warcraft. We could finally dive into the world we had been playing in for years. It was awesome to run around and see the barrens, to see Strat all burned down. The game wasn’t based around gear, instead, we got to play in a world we all recognized yet seemed brand new. Then as WoW became more popular people began caring less and less about lore and more about loot. People looked forward to the next batch of content not to see more stuff, but to be able to get better gear.
With Cataclysm and with the recent patch, it seems that Blizzard is trying to bring back the lore aspect of WoW which excites me. I have been playing Dragon Age recently, and I realized how much I miss being engrossed in an intriguing world and lore (as nerdy as that sounds). I look forward to starting a new character with Cataclysm and taking my time leveling, and just enjoying everything the game has to offer.
But on a side note, I have no idea how to focus a game on lore yet keep people “addicted” enough to play year after year.
When Arthas is taken down in one way or another, it’ll officially close the book on every aspect of lore brought over form Warcraft 3 minus Thrall but I hear he’s going to be the next Guardian of Tirisfal. The revival of Deathwing is a total throwback to the deeper lore and more bloody visceral world of Warcraft 2. Deathwing really is the biggest motherfucking dragon you’ll ever see.
I can imagine the raid fight he’ll be. Visible from the normal world but assaulted only in the raid. You fight alongside the dragon aspects in their full form, you use gunships, tanks, naval vessels because he’s that huge he spans a very wide battlefield. You fight this bastard in sections! Whenever you cut him he bleeds molten lava. Yeah man we’re in for some shit! I can’t wait.
I have to admit I’m on the fence with this issue. Ulduar certainly wasn’t too easy. It wasn’t too hard but it did offer really fun challenges to be overcome. TOC and the first wing of ICC are both too easy, reminding me of Naxx and OS. But then again OS+3 wasn’t too easy and a lot of people struggled with Malygos at first. I do not like that Dran ignored Ulduar when he summed up Wrath as too easy. Anyhow here’s to hoping the later wings are more fun.
Actually, unless the next wings of ICC offer a better challenge, Ulduar will be the only raid where they did things to my liking in WotLK. Algalon was an awesome idea, and I thouroughly enjoyed the 2 nights we wiped on Yogg before he went down. The hard modes were fun too, but again, killing a boss on HM after having killed him 6 times before on normal, just aint as awesome as killing Algalon for the first time.
Ulduar was at its best particularly in the first few weeks when bosses like XT were tuned reallllly tightly, tightly enough that even getting the hard mode to trigger was a challenge. Then some weeks passed and they nerfed his HP, his AOE AND his freaking enrage timer. But for those first few weeks, Ulduar was truly awesome.
And Algalon? I think its the best thing to come out of WotLK (except for the limited to 1 hour of tries a week thing, thats a pretty shit way of artificially inflating an encounter’s difficulty), as I mentioned in earlier posts, Pete, My ideal raid would be one that contains a wing with normal bosses that you can later attempt in hard mode fora repeat, harder challenge, and another wing of uber challenging bosses on the level of Algalon. You may not require these to progreess, but it would be nice to have several bosses in a raid that were simply hard and a challenge to kill, without the need of having to resort to switching them to hard modes.
Dran,
I agree whole-heartedly with your feelings on the first couple of weeks of Ulduar and for an ideal raid. I really liked XT being a proper gatekeeper with, the tight engrage and the high damage to the tank and raid, unless you brought a proper block-adin in which case the tanking did get over-simplified. Anyhow here’s to hoping for better in ICC.
I miss the days of vanilla wow where there was a defined separation between the gear level of players. Now even the difference between some of the heroic gear compared to the normal version is minimal compared to the jump in stats it used to be. The whole “bring the player not the class” mixed with the huge nerf in time it takes to get to end game instances ruined the game imo.
Getting into ICC after just hitting 80 about a week earlier is just stupid. I love getting into an instance only to find the person hasnt even played their class long enough to know what said toon even does.
Spooner wasn’t that in one of our Grull’s raids where the hunter didn’t even know what Misdirect was?
Hey All, and happy holidays, though a bit late
Have any of you though about Blizzard’s goal to balance everything? I mean the way they want to balance all classes so each class can do almost everything the others can? This is awful IMHO. I agree that there should be some balance but this is ruining the whole lore at some point. Cmon- tell me u want to see a Human Druid!? I actually like that DK’s are OP! They are supposed to be mean, tough killing machines, and they are! I liked it that rogues can stun lock you and kill you if you are not careful. Now evey class has like 3-4 ways how to remove stuns or shorten them significantly.
I liked that tanks could not do a lot of damage- now you have arenas with tank DPS???
(By the way kid you not, my pala with pvp gear on retribution does around 3 K on a test dummy lvl 80. When i change to protection spec, again same gear with a crappy quest blue 1H hammer and a healer’s shield – i do just 300-400 DPS less than on Ret, -this is NOT normal.)
My point is that Blizz is paying too much attention to the player whining and QQ on the forums and trying too much to melt everything into one big pice. At the end we will have each class able to heal, do DPS, tank, and BUBBLE, and it will look like Arthas cos he is cool…
Peace
Raiding has never been easy,it’s just that the players who has raided constantly got good at doing it.
People go like ”omfg pre-bc was hc now its face-roll,wtf?”
pre-bc was hc cuz it was totally new game,new content.
“Clearing the first 4 bosses in ICC on the first night doesnt constitute a challenge, unless you are woefully undergeared or easily distracted by shiny little things, but thats just the way bliz tuned the fights and designed them to be”
Dran, as a hardcore raider, I vehemently disagree with your opinion of raiding now. What you said is true, to an extent. But what is also true is the difficult version of the instance has not been released.
Have you beat all of the hardmodes in TOC? Cleared hardmode Anub’arak? Killed Yogg with 0 keepers? If not, why are you complaining things are too easy? Some hardcore raiders are dissatisfied with the normal modes, but they’re the same crowd that don’t believe everyone should have an equal chance at seeing content, because they’re not “good enough”. That is pure and simple elitism, whether or not you wish to admit it.
I have done all of those things as a hardcore raider, and I can tell you – they most certainly WERE NOT easy (specifically Yogg0 and Anub25HM). Come back and say the same thing when you have killed the content on the “hard” setting, please!
For credibility, here is my main’s armory:http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Firetree&n=Alouette